Rodriguez isn't raising the head of Medusa!

Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. There are rumors circling the net this morning that Robert Rodriguez will helm the CLASH OF THE TITANS remake. This isn't a new rumor, but the guys at LatinoReview got some intelligence that say he's a lock.
I was able to get in touch with Rodriguez directly and he confirmed that he was indeed looking seriously at it (thanks to a great script by RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK/EMPIRE STRIKES BACK's Lawrence Kasdan), but had to bow out because they wanted it to go pre-strike and Rodriguez has his own flicks he wants to move on before the actor's strike, so he picked his own projects.
That's the latest news on the flick. Rodriguez isn't the first person to tell me Kasdan's draft is pretty great. I'd love to read it myself. I'm not immediately on-board with remaking CLASH OF THE TITANS, but I am totally down to see some good creature features and Harryhausen-esque fantasy on the big screen again. Thoughts?

Maybe there's a part of Clash of the Titans I missed where all the one dimensional characters bust out gimmick weapons and have showdown in the form a poor Leone hommage in front of green screens of an animated Mexico with the RZA blasting in the background, I guess I'll have to go back and rewatch it to see how any of Rodriguez's work would make him somebody's choice for this materiel.

I'm a huge fan of the original and harryhausen is a god as far as i'm concerned, but after seeing the potc films I think cgi has know reached a level where they can create monsters that are just as awesome as stop-motion. I'd be really interested in seeing what could be done with clash of the titans.

Hes made the same movie three times, twice. (Mexican bandit/spy kids) This is sacred ground for us kids who didnt have cable who saw Clash a million times after godzilla on saturday matinees. Just leave it be....its harryhausen's last work. Its cooler than any cgi, just because its a dead art form and a work of art unto itself. ( the animations)

but it'd be interesting to see what he'd do with it. When I think epic fantasy and monsters, especially a remake of a film like this, there's only one man for the job - and his name is Tim Story, the filmmaking legend who brought us Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

The original is a masterpiece, very creepy, very adult. How some people have called it cheesy is beyond me. The stop-motion lends such an otherworldly air to the proceedings, and the ample blood and nudity bring it out of the light-hearted quagmire it could've fallen into.

I cant wait for the E.T.Remake,you dont think a remake of E.T.hasnt been discussed.I guarantee once spielbergs gone a remake and sequels will are coming.It'll be awhile but sequels and remakes will happen.Hollywood just doesnt know when to quit.

This is good news. I like Rodriguez and all, but this deserves more class. If I could pick anyone I'd go with a George Miller kinda guy. Or a Peter Weir, why not. Even Del Toro, man he loves his creatures. A man can dream...

Petersen works really well with effects and can handle mythic subject matter. Troy was a mediocre movie, but I actually blame it mostly on the script's pacing and the poor acting. There's some new director's cut, but I haven't watched it and probably won't.<br><br>Still, in absence of Ridley Scott, I'd recommend giving Petersen another shot. He's definately way more suited to this than Rodriguez. I mean, jeez, Rodriguez??? Following that logic they'll probably try Hype Williams next.

His strengths are coming up with gimmicks and writing action driven genre stories full of one dimensional characters. I actually think Planet Terror would've worked much better as a video game with some funny cinematic interludes than as an actual movie. However that video game would probably have then gotten adapted into a movie anyway.

While I love the original, it does emit the strong odor of cheese. I have often thought that this story, or some other Greek Mythology inspired story, would be the perfect big action movie. I biggest fear is that they rush it into production and totally mess it up.

that doesn't help your cause when it comes to people thinking you favor certain people over others, Harry. The fact that Universal dropped the project was indeed "cool news" that should've been posted for all of your readers.

This is one of THE major remakes that I'm excited about. I'd like to see a few classical stories make it to the big screen rather than just one. The special effects can finally keep pace with the fantastic elements of those stories and it's kind of baffling that there haven't been more attempts to bring the era to life.

Earth VS Flying Saucers, 20 Million Miles To Earth and It Came From Beneath The Sea in colorized versions next month on DVD (alongside the original black and whites). If he's okay with those alterations, then whats the problem with remaking Clash? Maybe he's needing some fresh influx of cash.

with stop motion. Stop motion looks like crap. It's a beautiful art form for old movies where you're not paying attention to the realism of the effects or for surreal Tim Burton movies but filmmakers, engineers and FX artists have worked for decades to move on from stop motion and they shouldn't revert back to it because a couple people feel nostalgic. I agree that CGI can look too fluid and weightless but instead of abandoning it and going back to something worse, they should work on improving what they they have.

can benefit from a remake. It's a "classic" in a sense that it was a good, well remembered nerd movie for it's time that also happened to have some commercial success. But at the same time, it's not a sacred, "don't you dare touch that" type of classic that has hard core loyalist fans. And Harry Hamlin was ok but not great or iconic like say, Kurt Russell as Snake so there's no real worry of destroying a beloved movie character. Plus, Titans can really, really benefit from modern SFX and budgets and is the type of classic literary story that would be interesting to see from the viewpoint of another director/writer/creative team's unique vision. Like rather than go for a mainstream PG family movie, I think a horror/thriller approach might be an interesting twist in the right hands. Or maybe even a Python-ish or Shawn of the Dead-ish Brit comedy.

No offense, but the CGI in Rodriguez's movies usually look pretty bad. Maybe because he works with small budgets and does most of it at home, I dunno. Anyway, it may work for Spy Kids, but it aint good enough for Clash Of The Titans.

Agreed! This haterism going on is unfounded. Rodriguez makes pimp-ass movies to geek out on, and Planet Terror is easily my new favorite RR film. Sin City was fantastic, but, my god, a more rockin' horror film than PT? Nowhere to be found... (at least not in recent history).

Except to those who have been absorbing its beauty in films for decades. And wait until how bad that CG looks just 5 years from now. You'll never want to go back to CG but stop-motion will remain eternally watchable because of its nature. So there.

I totally called this. Just a few days ago I posted on that lovely bones production pics TB and I said that this was the perfect movie to be reinvented. This can be turned into something totally different than the original. Just like KING KONG and WAR OF THE WORLDS the original clash is dated enough to be revisited (even tho I am not a fan of either of those movies). Thats how you can tell the really talented people from the not so talented. Speilberg, Jackson, and Kasdan, all know well enough that there's no point in remaking a movie that cannot be turned into something new

And here's why: I love stop motion as much as any geek can (I have a few armature models myself, and have made a few short films with them) - Stop Motion is time consuming too, and a much much hard art than rendering something on a computer, but the artists like those at ILM and WETA don't make "weightless" and "shiny" models...they use lots of textures, good lighting effects and the such that most of the stuff that has been out in the past couple of years looks realistic. Hell, even shit from 2000 or prior to that still holds up well on film, but if you look at stop motion, the bulk it has, the bad bad bad horrible frame rate and the obvious not realisitc tone of it would not hold up in cinemas of this age and generation. Stylized films like Wallace and Gromit and The Nightmare Before Christmas (and James, Corpse Bride, etf) can get away with it is because they are entirely animated films--not live action with stop-motion in it. Anyone who says that stop motion can be do right in a movie like this in a TIME like this needs to get over their love and nostalgic feeling (and my poor grammar and spelling) of it all and realize that CGI is the only way to go.

No one's translated the look and feel of a comic book to the big screen as well (including Oscar winner Ang Lee's literally putting comic book panels on the screen in the Hulk) The visuals in Sin City were groundbreaking and will influence a lot of movies, including 300. Rodriguez did a great job in that movie.

There's a legitimate argument to re-make Clash of the Titans. The title is familiar. The original was a minor hit, though it didn't set the world on fire, and a good portion of the original's point were the Harryhousen effects. It's not like Harry Hamlin was this iconic actor that can't be replaced.

things like the battles in Empire or Jedi or Superman: The Movie. instead of combining movies with videogames with CGI, they should continue advancing physical and optical effects. those will always be the best.

I think his screenwriting skills are rather subpar. The Spy Kids trilogy is just awful stuff, even though they're meant for kids, they are just badly written and conceived. And the sequels to El Mariachi... less said, the better. And he's also disowned using film to shoot, which wouldn't be so bad if he was actually good at shooting on high-def video. His high-def work has been horrible looking and makes me literally queasy when I watch. (I don't count Sin City, because the videography was majorly altered in an abstracted, surreal way and not meant to be realistic. Sin City, though, is his best big budget movie yet.)

could have a Pirates of the Carribean-sized franchise on their hands. I'd love to see what someone like Jon Favreau, Frank Darabont, or even Martin Campbell could do with this supposedly rock-solid Kasdan script. I don't doubt Kasdan's abilities either; he's about as good a screenwriter as there is out there, although as a director he's hit and miss as he tends to be overindulgent.

Let's hope not. Mumford was good. Obviously ROTLA and ESB...but one dent in a person's career calls everything afterwards into question. Especially if it's the last thing they've done. Good luck to you, sir.

I just don't get it... Outside of Planet Terror, that guy just doesnt make good movies. And Sin City was not a good film. Visually stunning yes, but BOOOORRRING! Why even redo this one? The original is pretty damn cool.

I don't understand what prods are even trying to duplicate anymore. The success of the original? "Capture the spirit of the original/Update the material/Make it relevant for a new generation?" Do they think it's fun to make a movie that's already been made? Anywho, Turd's right Rodriguez is wrong for this project. Yes, it's impressive what the guy can do with a small budget but...wait I think I just answered my own question. Rewind...I don't understand why COTT would be remade. I can still watch the original and have a good time. I mean the effects weren't particularly groundbreaking post-Star Wars, but there's no way they can recapture that sense of escapism the combination of Greek mythos and stop-motion animation can. Also please no mo-cap.

Sin City was his most commercial big budget Hollywood flick that scored critical and box office success. When he started out, like many young male directors in the '90s (just before the dawn of the digital video age, and there was a last breath, mini-renaissance in the indie film medium), he showed a lot of promise with El Mariachi. He also demonstrated very good directing agility in From Dusk Till Dawn and The Faculty. But most of his other work has been perpetually juvenile, and badly written. And, like Lucas, he disses film stock as his medium of choice -- but his digital high-def work is lousy. (I would argue that Zack Snyder so far is the one promising director who figured out how to do high-def video well, in 300, in an artistic sense.) But back to Rodriguez: There has been too much hype with him. He has talent, but he hasn't applied it appropriately and to the best of his abilities. He's actually a decent action movie director, so long as he works with somebody else's screenplay and sticks to using film. But he insists on writing, using video, and now casting his girlfriend. In another career path, he could have directed Transformers, and been better than Michael Bay at it.

As much as I disagree with a lot of the negativity, I have to agree with some aspects of Rodriguez's abilities (or lack thereof, I suppose). He's very gifted visually, but not in terms of writing. He can pop out good ideas, but he lacks the ability to develop them. That's not a shot at the guy, there are plenty of absolutely amazing filmmakers (Ridley Scott, for example... although Rodriguez obviously isn't at Scott's level) who aren't writers, but focus more other elements. The fact that he handles everything is absolutely amazing and nobody can take that away from the guy. As much as he falls short occasionally (for example, that action scene in Once Upon a Time in Mexico with Danny Trejo and the dirt bikes... who the shit edited that? It's a goddamn mess!), you've got to give the guy credit for doing as much as he does.
What I'm most disappointed about here is the fact that the script was apparently well done, so we missed the first opportunity to see Rodriguez pull off a good script that wasn't his own (From Dusk Til Dawn and Sin City not being counted because of the involvement of the writers... The Faculty not counting because that wasn't exactly the strongest script anyway). I'm really intrigued to see the guy get a good script and see what he can do with it.
As for Barbarella, how insane was it that he demanded a hundred mill for it with ROSE MCGOWAN STARRING?? Jesus, that's like demanding the same amount for a remake of Grizzly with Giovanni Ribisi starring (as Richard Jaeckel's part, because Jaeckel was awesome). That was just a mind-numbingly stupid situation that I was actually surprised. The whole appeal of Rodriguez is that he's the punk rock filmmaker... he shows everyone that if you do your own thing CHEAP, you can get by rather well. Hopefully he gets shit back in line and continues to improve and bust out some good stuff like everyone's been expecting, instead of the usual "just okay" stuff with moments of quality.

He wants to churn out pet project about Shark boys or Spy Kids let him, I think they actually contain really crap CG made to look like, or probably actually is real Shite Stop motion creatures in that would make Harryhausen puke!!! <P>He only made 2 decent movies - The second Mariachi movie coz of Salma Hayek and Sin City both are good not Great! Once Upon a Time in Mexico was Incoherent Piss, his kids films are shite and I've yet to see Planet Terror but he insists on spouting shite like 'My movies always do better than Tarantinos' well maybee at box office but not in the long run!

Desperado rocked. But everything else this guy has made ranges from disappointing to complete crap: SPy Kids, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, His crappy half of From Dusk Till Dawn, Sin City, Shark Boy/Lava Girl, Grindhouse... it's all crap. I wanted to like him as much as the next guy, but it's time to admit he wasn't the great director we hoped he would be.<br><br>

Good summation of Rodriguez. I totally agree with you. I want the guy to be good. He is obviously not afraid to take risks. I guess he just needs good people around him to pull things off the right way...

He played the villain in Spy Kids 5 or whatever so we know he's tight with Rodriguez. Does anybody remember that terrible Golan Globus version of Hercules with Lou Ferrigno? I always confused it with Clash of the Titans as a kid because they both featured greek myths and mechanical creatures.(the owl in Titans, a robotic hydra, fly and godknowswhat in Hercules) I always thought of the movies as extensions of each other, even though Hercules was 30 times more ridiculous.

My argument is this: Fincher simply followed along what other high-profile directors (Lucas, Singer, Mann and Rodriguez) have been trying very hard to do with high-def video -- make the resulting footage look like it was shot on film. Snyder didn't do high-def "right" with 300. He accepted it for what it was: A completely different means of capturing moving images. He made no attempt to make 300 look like it was shot on film. He embraced high-def for all its digital, binary glory -- you see the pixels on the screen ALIVE. He used high-def, and tweaked the footage in post production, to give the movie an intentionally hyper-real look that couldn't have been achieved in film. He embraced what it was -- DIGITAL VIDEO, instead of lamely trying to make what remains a still-limited technology appear like film stock. Everybody else has been trying to shoot on high-def to fake the look of film, and calling it a day.

I couldn't think of much that would have turned me off to this faster than having Rodriguez direct...his action is invariably cheesy and the rest of what he films is generally goofy crap. Done right with new tech, a bit harsher, and someone who can actually direct- this could be a very interesting remake.

Every other entertainment site has reported that Barbarella has been cancelled, chiefly due to Rodriguez insisting that his girlfriend had to be the star. Not one word about it on this cutting edge site, though. Guess that happens when you get too close to the people you're SUPPOSED to be reporting on.

I just don't feel like going to that site again - for the n-th time - expecting to read a review of a script and instead finding out a review of how many Latinos are in the story and how they are represented. It really gets boring. Plus, when I watch a film, I want to know how the Papuans are represented.

in a loincloth, brandishing a shield in one hand and a sword in the other. Then again, I never wanted to see Harry Hamlin that way, either. But I was only 11, Harry was in shape, I'll give him that, and now he gets to bang the Holy Medusa out of that Lisa chick, whose body and mouth were made for receiving a man.

A fuckin' tool. The Scream awards function as little more than a plug for Liongate's cheap commerce. I mean, they're awarding movies that haven't yet been released! It's just a huckster fest. Rodriguez barks, "This is better than the fuckin' Oscars." Sour grapes from a hack who hasn't a chance in hell of nailing an Oscar. GRINDHOUSE was also awarded some shit to mollify Tarentino who obviously has nothing to do but listen to an audience of stoned fanboys. Never mind that GRINDHOUSE was one of the worst commercial disasters since HEAVEN'S GATE.

Hopefully with a better title than Sin City 2, but my wife worked at AMC close to two years ago, and the movie at one point was slated for release in April of 2006. Here we are almost a year later and still no sign of more Sin City. Come on, get to work on that. That's what I want to see at least.